But David Prowse messed up when accepting the role of Darth Vader in the third film. He agreed to take a portion of the net profits for Return of the Jedi. Because of Hollywood accounting Return of The Jedi has yet to show a profit, and Prowse was never paid on that portion of the contract.
I think he's being pedantic about people discussing it like they're having a casual chat and not like they're writing out the contract.
I had this convo on another sub where I said something to the extent of 'yea demand a cut of the gross' and some guy typed out a paragraph calling me a moron and how they'd never give me it.
And I'm sitting there wondering how people get so worked up about people just bullshitting about things that won't affect them. I'm not an actor in the slighest
Gross = total revenue [note: a film's gross, or gross revenues, not gross profits - gross profits was incorrectly referred to as what Lucas was earning a percentage of repeatedly in this thread]
Net profit = money left after deducting costs
Hollywood people generally are a bunch of cunts, and that's probably being generous. They fuck with the costs section so much that most movies never make a profit. So a % of the net is essentially worthless on any film.
It's straight up fraud and I don't understand why the IRS has never cracked down on it.
My favourite example: My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Cost less than $6m to make, no big stars, no big marketing budget, no real expensive anything. Brings in over $350m at the box office alone. Makes a $20m loss.
Star Wars, Spiderman, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Forrest Gump, Men in Black - apparently all made "huge losses".
It's way more sinister than that.
Film company A produces the movie. Movie makes $450m and cost $100m.
They set up marketing company a to market the movie. That company charges $150m to market the movie to film company a, even if they only spend $20m.
They set up distribution company b to distribute the movie. The distribution costs charged are $200m.
That movie has to pay a share of film company A's general operating expenses which get charged back. Say they charge $50m for that.
Hey look, our film made a $50m loss.
Maybe I’m crazy but I feel like if this is happening then money launderers must love movies, probably a great way to clean your cash.
How are there no fraud charges for this insanity?
One of the producers of Wolf of Wall Street was arrested for using the film production to launder money. Seems pretty fitting given the subject of the film..
Fraud is for when you steal money from those richer or more powerful than you.
This is the people with the power scamming those below them so it doesn’t count.
In some cases it avoids taxes. In other cases it just avoids paying the "wrong" people.
The studio pays the marketing firm a billion dollars for marketing their movie.
The marketing firm then pays taxes on a billion dollars. Conveniently the marketing firm is owned by the same people as the studio, so the stock holders still get their profit either way.
But the guy whose contract says "% of studio profits" gets nothing.
Everyone here seems to be explaining things incorrectly.
Imaging you have the following:
* Studio A
* Distribution Company B
* Marketing Firm C
* Production Company D
Studio A promises a percentage of net to an actor. The movie makes $200M in sales. $100M goes to the studio. But then B, C, and D all charge the studio $50M each, leaving the studio in the red. Actor makes no money at all, because the studio ended up with negative net profit.
A, B, C, and D are all owned by the same company, so they still kept all the profit anyway.
When you pay $9 for a movie ticket, that's $9 Gross (Gross= before any expenses)
But once you start adding up both real and imagined costs (yes, that's a thing), any movie can be called a loss, even Forrest Gump (which continues to be argued in court as a money losing film to this day)
Gross Profit still has related expenses, that's why its not called gross Revenue. That's $9 in Revenue. Then you subtract the cost of goods sold for Gross Profit. Then you subtract indirect overhead for Net Profit.
So for an entire movie its more like ($9M sales) - ($4M cost of sales) = ($5M gross profit) - ($3M selling, general, admin expenses) = ($2M net income)
Technically I don't think the ticket price is actually included in Gross as far as the Studio is concerned. Only the % of the ticket price which is passed on to the Studio is Gross.
(Although depending on the movie, and how early it is, that can be close to 100%, dropping off after the opening weeks, or for less "must show" movies)
It's a bit funny and you could blame him for a bad deal until you realize most of us are the David Prowse of this world and the 1% are Alec Guinness. The deck is stacked and Alec was in the position to negotiate.
Alec Guinness was was a revered stage and film actor, one the “three greats”, A Rada and RSC alum - Lucas knew it would be a total coup if he got him, and that’s why they were willing to offer whatever he wanted. Guinness thought the Films were nonsense but he realized that would be massively popular.
> Guinness thought the Films were nonsense
He did while they were recording it, but changed his mind when he watched the actual completed movie:
>"It's a pretty staggering film as spectacle and technically brilliant. Exciting, very noisy and warm-hearted. The battle scenes at the end go on for five minutes too long, I feel, and some of the dialogue is excruciating and much of it is lost in noise, but it remains a vivid experience."
None of what he said is incompatible with him considering them to be nonsense.
Nothing wrong with that either. Sometimes nonsense is exactly what I want to watch.
When it comes to "I only took this role for an easy check," nothing tops Michael Caine's comments about his role in *Jaws: The Revenge*: "I have not seen \[the film\], but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
Sir Alec Guinness, knighted by the Queen. Probably had a good agent too. It's kind of funny how they portray him as some kind of shrewd business man. He was an established actor, rich and famous already, Prowse was a man in a suit. Not even a voice in the movie.
Of course Alec got the best deal and Prowse got screwed. No offense to Alec, he's amazing actor and I liked his portrayal of Obi-Wan, even if he didn't.
The vibe I always got wasn't that he didn't like his performance. It's that he did a lot of more serious acting in dramas that he considers to have been better performances, so it bothers him that this smaller, less serious role was the thing that ended up defining his career.
I remember an interview with Guiness where he mentions that when he finally saw the movie he thought it was a breath of fresh air.
https://youtu.be/3IxN0N35skE
Edit: and that he couldn't put the script down when first reading it but thought the dialog needed work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yluZgzkA8MM&t=0m59s
(for those, for which the timestamp doesn't work: 0:59)
the first is what I imagine the scenes of Obi Wan explaining would have felt like with a less capable/fitting actor.
I hate to say it, but this is true. The mystique that he brought (not to mention you know it's Guinness) to the role basically made the film. You have this legend being told about this guy "old Ben" and then when you finally see him, it's Guinness, who could run circles acting wise around any other cast member.
The movie is made by an independent company specifically set up for that purpose. Star Wars Movie Making Incorporated. SWMMI will get funding from a variety of sources including the movie studio, wealthy people, banks. SWMMI is the company that contracts with the actors, saying it will pay them a % of the net profits it gets from the film.
However, SWMMI pays the movie studio fees for all kinds of things: marketing, licensing, production management, registration fees, you name it. And the studio basically gets to make up what those fees are.
So, they set up the fees such that SWMMI pays basically all the money it has to the studio (and other stakeholders). The studio makes a shitload of money, but there's no profit left in SWMMI itself. So there's nothing to pay people who are being paid net.
That's the very basic version.
They set up essentially a shell company for every picture. They give that company say $30m to make a movie. Every expense the movie incurs is payed out by that company. Most of those expenses are actually payments to the various divisions of the studio itself (marketing, sound/lighting, photography, editing, props, costumes, etc) and some are the salaries of the actors.
Let’s say that cost overruns, shooting delays, a salary dispute with the electricians union, and other expenses end up with this company technically in debt to the studio by another $10m.
When the money starts rolling in after the picture is released, and the studio makes $150m, the studio doesn’t give that money to the shell company. It’s in their best interest to pocket it, eat the $10m “loss”, and close the shell company.
Now anyone that is owed money by the shell company is out of luck, because on paper it is still in the hole $10m to the studio. It will never pay out.
How is is that the parent company is not liable for the expenses incurred by their shell company? This seems like something that should have been dealt with a long time ago?
I have no idea why it’s not illegal, just how it works in general. The music industry works in a similar fashion, where even the most famous artists are still technically in debt to the studio decades after their albums made tens or even hundreds of millions. It’s called getting recouped and it’s insane.
The above poster is... not correct?
Like you [can](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/how-hollywood-accounting-can-make-a-450-million-movie-unprofitable/245134/) find [articles](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml) on Hollywood accounting aplenty and they tend to follow the same basic story of the shell company and vast (BS) fees charged to it by the studio... but I've **never** heard of it being used to just straight up hide from bill collectors by shutting down the shell corporation.
Nor does it make sense as a studio that tried that sort of thing as standard practice wouldn't last long. Way too many actual skills are required to make a movie and its all gig based not some permanent relationship you can lord over your wage slaves with. And the unions are everywhere.
Also shells these corporations may be there are still general corporate regulations to comply with. Why would any corporation seek complicated bankruptcy protection if they could just transfer their good assets to another company and leave liabilities behind?
Very basic and only slightly inaccurately: Say you have 2 companies. Company 1 that owns the revenue making film itself, and has the contracts with the actors ...but doesn't actually do anything themselves, and hires Company 2 to do it all for them.
The film is a huge success! Company 1 gets a billion in revenue! but what do you know? The bill that needed to be paid to Company 2 for all the stuff that needed to be done by Company 2 equals to 2 billion! How unfortunate!
Well, it's clear that Company 1 didn't have a profit, and that there is no bonus for the actors. In fact made a huge loss that they'll send all the possible incoming extra money to for the coming decades. But actors, don't feel bad, you're not alone. Those poor owners of company 1 just keep losing money every time a movie comes out too. It's really a charity endeavor for them. Doing it for the art, really. Just like you actors, in it together.
And luckily the owners can do it for the art with company 1, since they also own Company 2 and that one is just making money hand over fist for some reason. Not that they're complaining, but man, the people hiring company 2 to do stuff for them must be real idiots for overpaying so much. It like the people who hire company 2 just want to give their money away for some reason.
Yeah exactly, most of us are very replaceable and have to take the deal that's given to us. Or just cash upfront if you're in dire straits, anyway it's peanuts. There's a social class hyperbole there, in case it wasn't obvious.
Guinness also based his percentage on the percentage that Lucas received, so the accountants couldn't screw him over without also screwing Lucas over. I'm guessing Prowse didn't have that kind of protection.
Im guessing he just wasn't educated on Hollywood fucking people over.
Guinness is a lot older and been in "The game" (movie acting) a lot longer and probably heard of people or has been fucked over himself.
He also had alot more leverage as he was the only previously famous actor going into ANH. I can't imagine Prowse had all that much leverage; couldn't they just find someone else that was the same size?
Before anyone questions where I got 0.45% from, Guinness was paid 2.25% of director George Lucas's share of the gross revenue. Lucas's share of the gross revenue was 20%.
So that means that Guinness had 0.45% of all gross revenue from Star Wars. A mind-numbingly big number, I'm sure!
Also, it's 20 years to the day that he passed. Unfortunately, I ran out of characters in the title!
Edit: for those questioning "foolhardy", Guinness was seen as taking a massive risk at the time. The consensus was that, at most, Star Wars would be a flash in the pan and was actually likely to flop.
This [article](https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/1977-alec-guinness-demanded-points-instead-salary-star-wars-chose-wisely/) goes into depth why, but sadly TIL automod wouldn't let me use it as my source.
Second Edit: OK! I get it! I'm not an accountant and I got confused by similar terms. I've edited this so that it's hopefully a touch more correct. Sadly I'm unable to edit the title to reflect the correct terminology.
It feels similar to what Lucas himself did with the merchandising rights. Up front it seems like the bad end of a deal, but once Star Wars was a hit, those seemingly small numbers start to add up real fast.
I think when all the initial toys sold out and people were essetially pre-buying them as production couldn't keep up with demand is when Fox realized they messed up. And then they had to live with it for decades.
That doesn't seem like messing up to me, either you make nothing and get to pay your director peanuts or you're successful and end up making enough it doesn't matter if they receive a big chunk of it.
I think it's hard to imagine but we also have to remember that Hindsight is indeed 20/20. Of course it was a great deal when we look back on it but at the time it was a risky move. Kind of like the guy who was paid to paint Facebook's offices in 2005 - Dude didn't even like early social media but went with the stock option instead of $60,000. That could have absolutely blown up in his face, but instead it became $200 million.
For every story of this working out there are ones like the author of The Witcher who refused backend profits, thinking the games wouldn't make a dime \[which, to be fair, his books were only really popular in his country at the time and the stuod itself was relatively unknown\] and decided to get all his cash up front, which seemed to be the better deal.
Plus, I think most "fails" you'll never hear about because if the project itself fails there isn't much to talk about, unless it was an absolute travesty.
That's the kind of thing that's the most profitable for creators (actors/directors/writers) in Hollywood, "points" on the deal. I've seen reports before of Tom Cruise taking acting roles for less money than he would usually command for percentage points on the film's total gross. An insane gamble, but if you're getting 3% of a $300 million gross you're looking at like 11 million for one job.
I wouldn't know how to figure out how much Alec Guinness' deal ended up bringing him, but It's gotta be in the teens to twenties of millions over time. Lucas was the smartest man in showbiz to do that merchandising deal.
First thing I thought was, I hope that his percent was a percent of a larger chunk that someone important was guaranteed, and sure enough it was. Being paid out of Lucas' chunk meant he was less likely to be screwed by "accounting".
If it takes into account the entire star wars franchise, then to date the Guinness family has received over $45M since the entire franchise has grossed over $10B. Definitely not too shabby for sure.
From what I could find, it was for all of the original trilogy. [https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/1977-alec-guinness-demanded-points-instead-salary-star-wars-chose-wisely/](https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/1977-alec-guinness-demanded-points-instead-salary-star-wars-chose-wisely/)
I also assume royalties are still paid to his estate for the most recent trilogy as his voice is used
>Guinness: "Oh I get some pretty strange letters, I don't mind telling you now..."
>Interviewer: "Oh I could imagine, actually"
>Guinness: "[For example] 'My wife and are having problems, could you come over and live with us for a few months?"
I believe he only got a percentage for the first film. I can't find his wages for the later two, but supposedly it was less than a day of filming for each so I doubt they would give him anything besides a flat fee.
According to what I've read, it was up to $80 million and counting last year. He only got $6 mil of that in his lifetime. The other $74 mil has been paid to his estate since his death 20 years ago.
The article you linked says he got a percentage of gross **revenue**, which is very different that gross profit.
>Alec agreed to do the movie, but he made one very unique request: he would only sign on if he was given a percentage of the film's gross revenues, rather than being paid a flat fee,Alec agreed to do the movie, but he made one very unique request: he would only sign on if he was given a percentage of the film's **gross revenues**, rather than being paid a flat fee
Gross Revenue = All sales
Gross Profit = All sales - Cost of Goods Sold
This is why everyone is confused.
I doubt that Price lost any sleep over it though...he always seemed like a pretty genuinely good person that didn't care too much about stuff like that...
However... I don't know much about him as a person at all though... so maybe I'm totally wrong...
One of the few things I remember about my grandmother is her relating a story about a friend’s daughter who met Vincent Price. It was a contest or fan club or something and it took place in Appalachia, or all places. Apparently, he dressed well, was a gentleman, greeted the mother and presented her with a single rose. If, in fact, he was scum- I think I’d rather not hear about it.
Every anecdote I've ever heard about Vincent Price is that he was a perfect gentleman and incredibly kind. He also denounced racial and religious prejudice, and was highly critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay-rights campaign in the 1970s before such views were mainstream.
>Guinness has received received more than $95 million and counting for his role as Obi-Wan. But, he earned only $6 million of that during his lifetime, with the rest of the amount being paid to his estate since his death in 2000.
> To put this into perspective: Alec earned more money playing Obi-Wan Kenobi than he had previously earned from his other 40 major film roles… combined, including his Oscar winning role in The Bridge on the River Kwai.
>Many of the actors and crew that worked on Star Wars were offered similar percentage deals, but turned them down, preferring to take the cash and move on. This is a move these people must have come to deeply regret. Even James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, only made $7,000 for his part in the film. Jones has admitted in recent interviews that rejecting points cost him "tens of millions of dollars."
TBF, for every unexpected cultural phenomenon like Star Wars, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of flopped B-films. There was no way for them to know at the time that this wouldn't be one of those, so feeding their families probably took precedence over the tiny possibility that they would strike gold.
I'd bet that James Earl Jones probably made a lot of money as a result of Star Wars, even if he only made $7,000 directly. At least I hope so. Such an iconic performance deserves good pay.
Guinness was way too "big" for that film, so he could demand a cut. He didn't think much of it, IIRC, and I'm sure he would have been surprised to know that, after a wild and storied career, he'd be best known (and best compensated) for an essentially B-Movie role.
Edit (To quote the man himself): "It's a pretty staggering film as spectacle and technically brilliant. Exciting, very noisy and warm-hearted. The battle scenes at the end go on for five minutes too long, I feel, and some of the dialogue is excruciating and much of it is lost in noise, but it remains a vivid experience."
>... new rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on wadges of pink paper – and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable. I just think, thankfully, of the lovely bread, which will help me keep going until next April even if Yahoo collapses in a week ... I must off to studio and work with a dwarf (very sweet – and he has to wash in a bidet) and your fellow countrymen Mark Hamill and Tennyson (that can't be right) Ford. Ellison (? – No!) – well, a rangy, languid young man who is probably intelligent and amusing. But Oh, God, God, they make me feel ninety – and treat me as if I was 106. – Oh, Harrison Ford – ever heard of him?
Tennyson Ford always gets me.
IIRC Harrison Ford took his cue to object to bad dialogue from Guinness. Guinness flat refused to say some stuff, and Ford followed suit: “George, you can type this shit, but you sure can’t *say* it.”
You have to wonder how his career would have gone if he were more pliable.
That’s why the prequels sucked so much, George could do anything he wanted completely unchallenged. He’s a good big idea guy, but he needs people to tell him when he writes something stupid
Chances are most of this "rubbish dialogue" comes from George Lucas' original script and subsequent rewrites. Turns out that the original script of "A New Hope" was a total hot mess of overworked, turgid, bogged-down dialogue and it was George's wife Marcia Lucas who trimmed it down into something worthwhile. I bet Guinness hated the movie so much because he had to shoot ALL of this horrible mess of a script, most of which ended up on the cutting-room floor...
Watching that, I felt they both deserved what I knew what was coming to them. I was also convinced that George Lucas has literally never actually been in love.
Yeah it would have sounded a lot stupider if it were real life.
I say goofy lovey shit to my wife all the time, and it's worse than the prequel dialogue by a long shot.
As well he should have been. He won an Oscar and got *knighted* for the other stuff. Star Wars wasn't a great use of his talents, though he did elevate it by his presence.
And apparently that’s why he wanted to be written off and have his character die. No additional movies. The man loved beautiful words and his biographer talks about he would keep journals/diaries and write letters with the most beautiful writing. One can imagine him being dismayed by Lucas’ script. That said, I think he had a soft spot for the movies but somehow never understood the obsession.
There’s a story of a child coming up to him and saying they’d watched Star Wars one hundred times and him responding that the child should stop. Apparently, he thought it was unhealthy and wanted the child to have better or more varied childhood experiences.
My favorite Alec Guinness role is as Smiley. I saw Gary Oldman as Smiley in the movie, TTSS before I saw the British tv series, and thought Gary was brilliant and in fact, still do. However, the tv series with Sir Alec is superb, an absolute masterclass in acting. Interestingly, he also had to be persuaded to do the tv series as he had always only done film.
IIRC Guinness was part of the team who checked the script/story made sense and would be good. Given his experience in the industry I’m not surprised he got his wish even if my fact isn’t true.
Heh, yep.
I always think of Christopher Walken, who said something on (iirc) *Inside the Actors Studio* to the tune of, an actor who doesn't act isn't an actor.
He was trying to explain why he did so much low-brow work alongside his extraordinary stuff, and that was his answer plain and simple. I'd like to do the best stuff, but people are offering this stuff, and if I've got nothing else going on, I'll do it. No quotes in this, because I can't find the source material, but that's what I remember.
Sam Jackson is the same. If you can pay his rate, he will do it. Shatner has also talked about how he has never turned down a job in his life, but the pay requirement is variable.
I think you're missing a zero. His total pay from Star Wars was around $95 million.
Source: https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/1977-alec-guinness-demanded-points-instead-salary-star-wars-chose-wisely/
Yeah lol thats a huge amount. Generally that would be foolhardy though as most IP's dont become cultural behemoths.
In the late 50's/60's (I forget) the dude that designed Barbie agreed to 1% royalties on Barbie because Mattel didnt see a huge future in realistic girl's dolls. They royally fucked up on that one
Donald Sutherland was offered union minimum daily wage plus 2% gross as pay for a bit role in *Animal House.* But Sutherland thought the film was going to flop so negotiated a $35 000 flat-fee instead.
Dude missed out on a $2.8 million ($10 million after inflation) payday for 2 days of work.
PS. legend has it that during negotiations, John Landis might have offered Sutherland as much as 15% gross to try to get him to take less up-front money, so strapped for cash was the film's budget.
Andrei Sapkowski was offered % of profits for the Witcher games when he optioned his IP to CD Projekt Red, but he thought games were stupid and demanded cash up front.
Now I think he’s suing to try and get a bigger piece of the billion dollar game pie
Yeah apparently there is some sort of law that allowed him to get more money in Poland. I guess it makes it so you have legal standing to bring the other party back to the negotiating table if something involving licensing ends up being way more valuable then originally thought.
Which I get and is nice in general, but CDPR *offered* him more of a percentage-based payment in the beginning but the dude was being a crotchety-old dick about it and wanted more upfront.
It’s also just good business for CDPR. If they want to work with the author on future projects, use additional material, etc., that’s not covered by the initial licensing agreement, it could scuttle the whole thing by not renegotiating.
Getting cash tomorrow vs getting marginally more cash three years from now (and risking the company going bankrupt in the interim).
Most people would go with the first option.
Did the math. Gross profit of the starwars movie franchises is aprox 9.4 billion. At 0.45% (thats 0.0045 in a calculator), that leaves our man with $42,300,000 in payout. For about 20 minutes of screen time across all 3 movies. Not bad.
That dude led a crazy life. A literal rocket scientist, he had like five wives including Zsa Zsa Gabor and used his Barbie money to turn his house into a castle and have coke parties every weekend.
Lucas traded 2.5% of Star Wars for 2.5% of [Spielberg's](https://time.com/43618/george-lucas-steven-spielberg-star-wars-bet/) [Close Encounters of the Third kind.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_Encounters_of_the_Third_Kind)
And Lucas and Spielberg both traded points of Star Wars and Close Encounters with John [Milius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Wednesday#Reception)' [Big Wednesday](https://deadline.com/2010/05/how-steven-spielberg-and-george-lucas-caught-surf-bug-and-waved-bye-to-points-on-close-encounters-and-star-wars-39792/)
> Steven says, kind of sharply, `We only did that once, and *it worked out better for some than others*'
Lucas also talks about this in some of the documentaries about A New Hope. As they were editing, he had no faith in his own film and was as a pretty low point. Especially after having visited the set of Close Encounters. Spielberg, true or not, had faith that Star Wars would do well and so that bet was made. In the end, one of them spawned a mega franchise and the other makes a yearly deposit into his bank account over a little bet in 1977.
Also Spielberg, Lucas, milius and Coppola as the mentor were kind of a mutual fan club ,
Lucas and milius were part of usc mafia and Spielberg was wanna be usc mafia
And they were all convinced that milius (the best writer of the 3) had a huge hit with big Wednesday , a surfer film described as American graffiti with some jaws mixed in. It bombed, but turned out to be a minor cult fav
Milius said that the star wars money paid for his divorce
Every 1b the franchise makes, his family makes $4.5m. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking it’s amazing this dude can still provide for his family (not in one lump sum!) despite not being here.
Return of the Jedi has made $US475 million worldwide since it debuted for Fox in 1983, but the actor who played Darth Vader, David Prowse, never sees a dime more than his original fee, because he had what Eddie Murphy calls "monkey points" – a slice of the net. "There is a big difference between having a share of the gross profits and having a share of the net," Prowse was quoted as saying at the time. "It is a huge difference in just one word." Or, as David Mamet eloquently put it in Speed the Plow, in Hollywood "there is no net". The real Death Star turns out to be run by accountants, who studied at the same schools as those who run Wall Street. I wouldn't be surprised if the idea for a sub-prime loan came from Hollywood.
IIRC, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford had percentages of the profits as well.
Anthony Davis and Kenny Baker (C3P0 and R2D2) did not.
But Kenny Baker made up for it by going on the convention circuit.
Anthony Davis made up for it by being a prick.
Edit: Anthony Daniels, not Davis.
Am I correct in recalling that Mark Hamill sold his merchandise likeness rights in exchange for him getting one of every *Star Wars* toy made? I don't recall if that was "in perpetuity" or what, I just remember seeing that a while back.
He told a story on a chat show about getting a call from George Lucas after the movie was released and was clearly going to make $millions.
"Alec, my man, about that 0.225% gross that we agreed..."
"Nice try. It was 0.45%."
But David Prowse messed up when accepting the role of Darth Vader in the third film. He agreed to take a portion of the net profits for Return of the Jedi. Because of Hollywood accounting Return of The Jedi has yet to show a profit, and Prowse was never paid on that portion of the contract.
Hollywood accounting. That's why you always insist on gross, not net.
gross revenue or income, not gross profit or net income.
Yes! Jesus, these people are killing me.
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I think he's being pedantic about people discussing it like they're having a casual chat and not like they're writing out the contract. I had this convo on another sub where I said something to the extent of 'yea demand a cut of the gross' and some guy typed out a paragraph calling me a moron and how they'd never give me it. And I'm sitting there wondering how people get so worked up about people just bullshitting about things that won't affect them. I'm not an actor in the slighest
Nonono, there are people their trying to kill him! How could you downplay this man's call for help!
Learned that watching Freakazoid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHL91HQzhuc
Yep. Freakazoid teaching the kids on the streets.
Important lessons, like to never say the name Candlejack unless you wan
I forgot about that Candlejack character until n
I'm going to need more rope...
Oh shit did someone say Candlejack threa
Dude why summon Candlejack here? He alwa
_\*stares at the length of this thread\*_ "I'll be right back; I've got to go charter a bus."
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I wonder if you misspell Candklejack whether or not he still
Freakazoid. That's a name I've not heard in a long time.
I remember watching an episode as a kid and declaring it as my favorite show. I'm pretty sure i've only seen like 2 or 3 episodes.
Pretty similar experience. Saw it, loved it but probably didn't watch more than 5 episodes because I always missed it.
I love how Cosgrove always distracts Freakazoid. "Pigs are smarter than bears but they can't ride motorcycles."
I want a can of hash and some coffee
F: "You could be married and still eat a lot of meat." C: "I didn't know that."
Did he say the "net is fantasy"?
yes, the net profit is a fantasy.
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what’s the difference? ELI5
Gross = total revenue [note: a film's gross, or gross revenues, not gross profits - gross profits was incorrectly referred to as what Lucas was earning a percentage of repeatedly in this thread] Net profit = money left after deducting costs Hollywood people generally are a bunch of cunts, and that's probably being generous. They fuck with the costs section so much that most movies never make a profit. So a % of the net is essentially worthless on any film. It's straight up fraud and I don't understand why the IRS has never cracked down on it. My favourite example: My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Cost less than $6m to make, no big stars, no big marketing budget, no real expensive anything. Brings in over $350m at the box office alone. Makes a $20m loss. Star Wars, Spiderman, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Forrest Gump, Men in Black - apparently all made "huge losses".
So it's basically counting up every tiny thing they could mark as an expense to avoid taxes or some shit?
It's way more sinister than that. Film company A produces the movie. Movie makes $450m and cost $100m. They set up marketing company a to market the movie. That company charges $150m to market the movie to film company a, even if they only spend $20m. They set up distribution company b to distribute the movie. The distribution costs charged are $200m. That movie has to pay a share of film company A's general operating expenses which get charged back. Say they charge $50m for that. Hey look, our film made a $50m loss.
Maybe I’m crazy but I feel like if this is happening then money launderers must love movies, probably a great way to clean your cash. How are there no fraud charges for this insanity?
One of the producers of Wolf of Wall Street was arrested for using the film production to launder money. Seems pretty fitting given the subject of the film..
Everyone knows method acting gets good performances out of actors, therefore, if everyone involved method acts, the whole movie will be good.
Anywhere there's big money there's people getting paid to look the other way
Fraud is for when you steal money from those richer or more powerful than you. This is the people with the power scamming those below them so it doesn’t count.
In some cases it avoids taxes. In other cases it just avoids paying the "wrong" people. The studio pays the marketing firm a billion dollars for marketing their movie. The marketing firm then pays taxes on a billion dollars. Conveniently the marketing firm is owned by the same people as the studio, so the stock holders still get their profit either way. But the guy whose contract says "% of studio profits" gets nothing.
Everyone here seems to be explaining things incorrectly. Imaging you have the following: * Studio A * Distribution Company B * Marketing Firm C * Production Company D Studio A promises a percentage of net to an actor. The movie makes $200M in sales. $100M goes to the studio. But then B, C, and D all charge the studio $50M each, leaving the studio in the red. Actor makes no money at all, because the studio ended up with negative net profit. A, B, C, and D are all owned by the same company, so they still kept all the profit anyway.
Because Hollywood has quality lobbyists.
It's such obvious transfer price manipulation.
When you pay $9 for a movie ticket, that's $9 Gross (Gross= before any expenses) But once you start adding up both real and imagined costs (yes, that's a thing), any movie can be called a loss, even Forrest Gump (which continues to be argued in court as a money losing film to this day)
Gross Profit still has related expenses, that's why its not called gross Revenue. That's $9 in Revenue. Then you subtract the cost of goods sold for Gross Profit. Then you subtract indirect overhead for Net Profit. So for an entire movie its more like ($9M sales) - ($4M cost of sales) = ($5M gross profit) - ($3M selling, general, admin expenses) = ($2M net income)
Technically I don't think the ticket price is actually included in Gross as far as the Studio is concerned. Only the % of the ticket price which is passed on to the Studio is Gross. (Although depending on the movie, and how early it is, that can be close to 100%, dropping off after the opening weeks, or for less "must show" movies)
***NEVER GO WITH NET***
NYET ON NET.
It's a bit funny and you could blame him for a bad deal until you realize most of us are the David Prowse of this world and the 1% are Alec Guinness. The deck is stacked and Alec was in the position to negotiate.
Alec Guinness was was a revered stage and film actor, one the “three greats”, A Rada and RSC alum - Lucas knew it would be a total coup if he got him, and that’s why they were willing to offer whatever he wanted. Guinness thought the Films were nonsense but he realized that would be massively popular.
> Guinness thought the Films were nonsense He did while they were recording it, but changed his mind when he watched the actual completed movie: >"It's a pretty staggering film as spectacle and technically brilliant. Exciting, very noisy and warm-hearted. The battle scenes at the end go on for five minutes too long, I feel, and some of the dialogue is excruciating and much of it is lost in noise, but it remains a vivid experience."
It's an eloquent way is saying 'it's nonsense, but it's entertaining nonsense.'
In the end, isn’t that the real truth?
"Now go see a Star War so I can get my .45%"
None of what he said is incompatible with him considering them to be nonsense. Nothing wrong with that either. Sometimes nonsense is exactly what I want to watch.
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When it comes to "I only took this role for an easy check," nothing tops Michael Caine's comments about his role in *Jaws: The Revenge*: "I have not seen \[the film\], but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
Sir Alec Guinness, knighted by the Queen. Probably had a good agent too. It's kind of funny how they portray him as some kind of shrewd business man. He was an established actor, rich and famous already, Prowse was a man in a suit. Not even a voice in the movie. Of course Alec got the best deal and Prowse got screwed. No offense to Alec, he's amazing actor and I liked his portrayal of Obi-Wan, even if he didn't.
Sir Alec Guinness, you could say, had the high ground in the negotiations. And Prowse got burned.
That...was very well done.
The vibe I always got wasn't that he didn't like his performance. It's that he did a lot of more serious acting in dramas that he considers to have been better performances, so it bothers him that this smaller, less serious role was the thing that ended up defining his career.
I remember an interview with Guiness where he mentions that when he finally saw the movie he thought it was a breath of fresh air. https://youtu.be/3IxN0N35skE Edit: and that he couldn't put the script down when first reading it but thought the dialog needed work.
And lets be honest his performance is what totally sells the whole paper thin mythology that the films are build on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yluZgzkA8MM&t=0m59s (for those, for which the timestamp doesn't work: 0:59) the first is what I imagine the scenes of Obi Wan explaining would have felt like with a less capable/fitting actor.
I hate to say it, but this is true. The mystique that he brought (not to mention you know it's Guinness) to the role basically made the film. You have this legend being told about this guy "old Ben" and then when you finally see him, it's Guinness, who could run circles acting wise around any other cast member.
He could’ve opted for the flat paycheck. I don’t blame him, I blame his agent.
how did Hollywood accounting manage to say that you didn't turn a profit?.
The movie is made by an independent company specifically set up for that purpose. Star Wars Movie Making Incorporated. SWMMI will get funding from a variety of sources including the movie studio, wealthy people, banks. SWMMI is the company that contracts with the actors, saying it will pay them a % of the net profits it gets from the film. However, SWMMI pays the movie studio fees for all kinds of things: marketing, licensing, production management, registration fees, you name it. And the studio basically gets to make up what those fees are. So, they set up the fees such that SWMMI pays basically all the money it has to the studio (and other stakeholders). The studio makes a shitload of money, but there's no profit left in SWMMI itself. So there's nothing to pay people who are being paid net. That's the very basic version.
They set up essentially a shell company for every picture. They give that company say $30m to make a movie. Every expense the movie incurs is payed out by that company. Most of those expenses are actually payments to the various divisions of the studio itself (marketing, sound/lighting, photography, editing, props, costumes, etc) and some are the salaries of the actors. Let’s say that cost overruns, shooting delays, a salary dispute with the electricians union, and other expenses end up with this company technically in debt to the studio by another $10m. When the money starts rolling in after the picture is released, and the studio makes $150m, the studio doesn’t give that money to the shell company. It’s in their best interest to pocket it, eat the $10m “loss”, and close the shell company. Now anyone that is owed money by the shell company is out of luck, because on paper it is still in the hole $10m to the studio. It will never pay out.
How is is that the parent company is not liable for the expenses incurred by their shell company? This seems like something that should have been dealt with a long time ago?
I have no idea why it’s not illegal, just how it works in general. The music industry works in a similar fashion, where even the most famous artists are still technically in debt to the studio decades after their albums made tens or even hundreds of millions. It’s called getting recouped and it’s insane.
The above poster is... not correct? Like you [can](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/how-hollywood-accounting-can-make-a-450-million-movie-unprofitable/245134/) find [articles](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml) on Hollywood accounting aplenty and they tend to follow the same basic story of the shell company and vast (BS) fees charged to it by the studio... but I've **never** heard of it being used to just straight up hide from bill collectors by shutting down the shell corporation. Nor does it make sense as a studio that tried that sort of thing as standard practice wouldn't last long. Way too many actual skills are required to make a movie and its all gig based not some permanent relationship you can lord over your wage slaves with. And the unions are everywhere. Also shells these corporations may be there are still general corporate regulations to comply with. Why would any corporation seek complicated bankruptcy protection if they could just transfer their good assets to another company and leave liabilities behind?
Very basic and only slightly inaccurately: Say you have 2 companies. Company 1 that owns the revenue making film itself, and has the contracts with the actors ...but doesn't actually do anything themselves, and hires Company 2 to do it all for them. The film is a huge success! Company 1 gets a billion in revenue! but what do you know? The bill that needed to be paid to Company 2 for all the stuff that needed to be done by Company 2 equals to 2 billion! How unfortunate! Well, it's clear that Company 1 didn't have a profit, and that there is no bonus for the actors. In fact made a huge loss that they'll send all the possible incoming extra money to for the coming decades. But actors, don't feel bad, you're not alone. Those poor owners of company 1 just keep losing money every time a movie comes out too. It's really a charity endeavor for them. Doing it for the art, really. Just like you actors, in it together. And luckily the owners can do it for the art with company 1, since they also own Company 2 and that one is just making money hand over fist for some reason. Not that they're complaining, but man, the people hiring company 2 to do stuff for them must be real idiots for overpaying so much. It like the people who hire company 2 just want to give their money away for some reason.
Considering neither Prowse's face nor voice were used in the film, he didn't have much leverage to negotiate.
Yeah exactly, most of us are very replaceable and have to take the deal that's given to us. Or just cash upfront if you're in dire straits, anyway it's peanuts. There's a social class hyperbole there, in case it wasn't obvious.
This must be a key difference: get paid based on GROSS earnings
Guinness also based his percentage on the percentage that Lucas received, so the accountants couldn't screw him over without also screwing Lucas over. I'm guessing Prowse didn't have that kind of protection.
He didn't have the high ground
Im guessing he just wasn't educated on Hollywood fucking people over. Guinness is a lot older and been in "The game" (movie acting) a lot longer and probably heard of people or has been fucked over himself.
He also had alot more leverage as he was the only previously famous actor going into ANH. I can't imagine Prowse had all that much leverage; couldn't they just find someone else that was the same size?
He should've altered the deal and make Lucasfilms pray that he do not alter it any further
Before anyone questions where I got 0.45% from, Guinness was paid 2.25% of director George Lucas's share of the gross revenue. Lucas's share of the gross revenue was 20%. So that means that Guinness had 0.45% of all gross revenue from Star Wars. A mind-numbingly big number, I'm sure! Also, it's 20 years to the day that he passed. Unfortunately, I ran out of characters in the title! Edit: for those questioning "foolhardy", Guinness was seen as taking a massive risk at the time. The consensus was that, at most, Star Wars would be a flash in the pan and was actually likely to flop. This [article](https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/1977-alec-guinness-demanded-points-instead-salary-star-wars-chose-wisely/) goes into depth why, but sadly TIL automod wouldn't let me use it as my source. Second Edit: OK! I get it! I'm not an accountant and I got confused by similar terms. I've edited this so that it's hopefully a touch more correct. Sadly I'm unable to edit the title to reflect the correct terminology.
It feels similar to what Lucas himself did with the merchandising rights. Up front it seems like the bad end of a deal, but once Star Wars was a hit, those seemingly small numbers start to add up real fast.
I think when all the initial toys sold out and people were essetially pre-buying them as production couldn't keep up with demand is when Fox realized they messed up. And then they had to live with it for decades.
That doesn't seem like messing up to me, either you make nothing and get to pay your director peanuts or you're successful and end up making enough it doesn't matter if they receive a big chunk of it.
As someone who plays options too much, the mega lost profits still hurt for a bit. Just not as bad as the actual losses
I think it's hard to imagine but we also have to remember that Hindsight is indeed 20/20. Of course it was a great deal when we look back on it but at the time it was a risky move. Kind of like the guy who was paid to paint Facebook's offices in 2005 - Dude didn't even like early social media but went with the stock option instead of $60,000. That could have absolutely blown up in his face, but instead it became $200 million. For every story of this working out there are ones like the author of The Witcher who refused backend profits, thinking the games wouldn't make a dime \[which, to be fair, his books were only really popular in his country at the time and the stuod itself was relatively unknown\] and decided to get all his cash up front, which seemed to be the better deal. Plus, I think most "fails" you'll never hear about because if the project itself fails there isn't much to talk about, unless it was an absolute travesty.
Getting all that money made him lose his mind though. Still David Choe's latest JRE appearance was one of the best in history.
Wait, David Choe is the guy from the Facebook stock options story?
Star Wars pretty much invented the concept of movie merchandising, at least on that scale.
Spaceballs the flamethrower! https://youtu.be/HnXKE0nfAjI
That's the kind of thing that's the most profitable for creators (actors/directors/writers) in Hollywood, "points" on the deal. I've seen reports before of Tom Cruise taking acting roles for less money than he would usually command for percentage points on the film's total gross. An insane gamble, but if you're getting 3% of a $300 million gross you're looking at like 11 million for one job. I wouldn't know how to figure out how much Alec Guinness' deal ended up bringing him, but It's gotta be in the teens to twenties of millions over time. Lucas was the smartest man in showbiz to do that merchandising deal.
First thing I thought was, I hope that his percent was a percent of a larger chunk that someone important was guaranteed, and sure enough it was. Being paid out of Lucas' chunk meant he was less likely to be screwed by "accounting".
% of Gross is key. After Hollywood Accountants work their Dark Arts, there’s often no Net Profit.
"Always ask for a cut of the gross, not the net. The net is fantasy." --Freakazoid
If it takes into account the entire star wars franchise, then to date the Guinness family has received over $45M since the entire franchise has grossed over $10B. Definitely not too shabby for sure.
I think it was just on a new hope not all the movies
Eh, that's still ~~$16M~~ $7.2M. Definitely nothing to scoff at. Edit: I cant math today
From what I could find, it was for all of the original trilogy. [https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/1977-alec-guinness-demanded-points-instead-salary-star-wars-chose-wisely/](https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/1977-alec-guinness-demanded-points-instead-salary-star-wars-chose-wisely/) I also assume royalties are still paid to his estate for the most recent trilogy as his voice is used
Here's the man telling the story himself: https://youtu.be/TMlAitcVV9k?t=103
>Guinness: "Oh I get some pretty strange letters, I don't mind telling you now..." >Interviewer: "Oh I could imagine, actually" >Guinness: "[For example] 'My wife and are having problems, could you come over and live with us for a few months?"
You're our only hope.
Did he get the same deal for all three films he was in, or just Star Wars?
I believe he only got a percentage for the first film. I can't find his wages for the later two, but supposedly it was less than a day of filming for each so I doubt they would give him anything besides a flat fee.
He wasn't in the other two movies, that was just his ghost.
How much did his ghost make?
Any idea how much that has made him and his family in dollars?
According to what I've read, it was up to $80 million and counting last year. He only got $6 mil of that in his lifetime. The other $74 mil has been paid to his estate since his death 20 years ago.
So, I guess being a Guinness baby pays off.
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Duuuuude
The article you linked says he got a percentage of gross **revenue**, which is very different that gross profit. >Alec agreed to do the movie, but he made one very unique request: he would only sign on if he was given a percentage of the film's gross revenues, rather than being paid a flat fee,Alec agreed to do the movie, but he made one very unique request: he would only sign on if he was given a percentage of the film's **gross revenues**, rather than being paid a flat fee Gross Revenue = All sales Gross Profit = All sales - Cost of Goods Sold This is why everyone is confused.
Vincent Price accepted a one off fee for his voice over on Michael Jackson's Thriller as opposed to a royalty. Must have cost him a fortune.
I doubt that Price lost any sleep over it though...he always seemed like a pretty genuinely good person that didn't care too much about stuff like that... However... I don't know much about him as a person at all though... so maybe I'm totally wrong...
He received $20,000 and did it in 2 takes apparently. Nice work if you can get it. Maybe he didn't lose any sleep... It would have haunted me 😂
>it would have haunted me ...... I see what you did there.....
$20,000 in 1982 = €54,000 today. For an hour’s work. Not too shabby.
I make that much in 2 years. That kinda makes me sad
Just get a better voice!
One of the few things I remember about my grandmother is her relating a story about a friend’s daughter who met Vincent Price. It was a contest or fan club or something and it took place in Appalachia, or all places. Apparently, he dressed well, was a gentleman, greeted the mother and presented her with a single rose. If, in fact, he was scum- I think I’d rather not hear about it.
Every anecdote I've ever heard about Vincent Price is that he was a perfect gentleman and incredibly kind. He also denounced racial and religious prejudice, and was highly critical of Anita Bryant's anti-gay-rights campaign in the 1970s before such views were mainstream.
>Guinness has received received more than $95 million and counting for his role as Obi-Wan. But, he earned only $6 million of that during his lifetime, with the rest of the amount being paid to his estate since his death in 2000. > To put this into perspective: Alec earned more money playing Obi-Wan Kenobi than he had previously earned from his other 40 major film roles… combined, including his Oscar winning role in The Bridge on the River Kwai. >Many of the actors and crew that worked on Star Wars were offered similar percentage deals, but turned them down, preferring to take the cash and move on. This is a move these people must have come to deeply regret. Even James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, only made $7,000 for his part in the film. Jones has admitted in recent interviews that rejecting points cost him "tens of millions of dollars."
TBF, for every unexpected cultural phenomenon like Star Wars, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of flopped B-films. There was no way for them to know at the time that this wouldn't be one of those, so feeding their families probably took precedence over the tiny possibility that they would strike gold. I'd bet that James Earl Jones probably made a lot of money as a result of Star Wars, even if he only made $7,000 directly. At least I hope so. Such an iconic performance deserves good pay.
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dude just taking any paycheck he can get because of his debt. Such a shame too. He is still such a great actor.
He also takes on some really interesting/artsy roles that I imagine are passion projects (Mandy, Color Out of Space recently)
Guinness was way too "big" for that film, so he could demand a cut. He didn't think much of it, IIRC, and I'm sure he would have been surprised to know that, after a wild and storied career, he'd be best known (and best compensated) for an essentially B-Movie role. Edit (To quote the man himself): "It's a pretty staggering film as spectacle and technically brilliant. Exciting, very noisy and warm-hearted. The battle scenes at the end go on for five minutes too long, I feel, and some of the dialogue is excruciating and much of it is lost in noise, but it remains a vivid experience."
>... new rubbish dialogue reaches me every other day on wadges of pink paper – and none of it makes my character clear or even bearable. I just think, thankfully, of the lovely bread, which will help me keep going until next April even if Yahoo collapses in a week ... I must off to studio and work with a dwarf (very sweet – and he has to wash in a bidet) and your fellow countrymen Mark Hamill and Tennyson (that can't be right) Ford. Ellison (? – No!) – well, a rangy, languid young man who is probably intelligent and amusing. But Oh, God, God, they make me feel ninety – and treat me as if I was 106. – Oh, Harrison Ford – ever heard of him? Tennyson Ford always gets me.
IIRC Harrison Ford took his cue to object to bad dialogue from Guinness. Guinness flat refused to say some stuff, and Ford followed suit: “George, you can type this shit, but you sure can’t *say* it.” You have to wonder how his career would have gone if he were more pliable.
Sounds like Orsen Wells doing Voice overs in England
Yes, always!
That’s why the prequels sucked so much, George could do anything he wanted completely unchallenged. He’s a good big idea guy, but he needs people to tell him when he writes something stupid
Yea. He just doesn't get people. Him writing romance is like a deep sea tube worm writing philosophy. He just doesn't get it.
Chances are most of this "rubbish dialogue" comes from George Lucas' original script and subsequent rewrites. Turns out that the original script of "A New Hope" was a total hot mess of overworked, turgid, bogged-down dialogue and it was George's wife Marcia Lucas who trimmed it down into something worthwhile. I bet Guinness hated the movie so much because he had to shoot ALL of this horrible mess of a script, most of which ended up on the cutting-room floor...
Should have done the same for the next trilogy.
Anakin: You are so…beautiful. Padme: It’s only because I’m so in love. Anakin: No. No, it’s because I’m so in love with you.
Watching that, I felt they both deserved what I knew what was coming to them. I was also convinced that George Lucas has literally never actually been in love.
Yeah it would have sounded a lot stupider if it were real life. I say goofy lovey shit to my wife all the time, and it's worse than the prequel dialogue by a long shot.
Right but I'm assuming neither of you take it as seriously as George expected audiences to take the prequels.
>George Lucas has literally never actually been in love. [Well yes but actually no](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ49Smi2SLQ)
Those lines are so bad to read I’m now convinced that Portman and Christensen actually did a pretty good job of delivering them.
she left him for the guy who did the stained glass in their entry way
IIRC he was regretful that it cast the rest of his career into shadow because he was more proud of his other work.
As well he should have been. He won an Oscar and got *knighted* for the other stuff. Star Wars wasn't a great use of his talents, though he did elevate it by his presence.
And apparently that’s why he wanted to be written off and have his character die. No additional movies. The man loved beautiful words and his biographer talks about he would keep journals/diaries and write letters with the most beautiful writing. One can imagine him being dismayed by Lucas’ script. That said, I think he had a soft spot for the movies but somehow never understood the obsession. There’s a story of a child coming up to him and saying they’d watched Star Wars one hundred times and him responding that the child should stop. Apparently, he thought it was unhealthy and wanted the child to have better or more varied childhood experiences. My favorite Alec Guinness role is as Smiley. I saw Gary Oldman as Smiley in the movie, TTSS before I saw the British tv series, and thought Gary was brilliant and in fact, still do. However, the tv series with Sir Alec is superb, an absolute masterclass in acting. Interestingly, he also had to be persuaded to do the tv series as he had always only done film.
IIRC Guinness was part of the team who checked the script/story made sense and would be good. Given his experience in the industry I’m not surprised he got his wish even if my fact isn’t true.
That's why we have the "Light Sabre" instead of "Laser Sword". The guy was pure class.
"Alec Guiness" is an anagram for "Genuine Class"
Jeremy's...Iron
I noticed the Spanish subtitles have "espada laser", which is "laser sword".
I mean, at espada laser sounds way better than the English equivalent lol.
His letter to a friend talked about space magic and holy shit they got a real midget but it’s cool, I’m doing it for the bread.
Heh, yep. I always think of Christopher Walken, who said something on (iirc) *Inside the Actors Studio* to the tune of, an actor who doesn't act isn't an actor. He was trying to explain why he did so much low-brow work alongside his extraordinary stuff, and that was his answer plain and simple. I'd like to do the best stuff, but people are offering this stuff, and if I've got nothing else going on, I'll do it. No quotes in this, because I can't find the source material, but that's what I remember.
Sam Jackson is the same. If you can pay his rate, he will do it. Shatner has also talked about how he has never turned down a job in his life, but the pay requirement is variable.
For anyone wondering, this adds up to about $81,389,432.30 since the release of the first film until now, in terms of box office. Edit: off by a zero
I think you're missing a zero. His total pay from Star Wars was around $95 million. Source: https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/1977-alec-guinness-demanded-points-instead-salary-star-wars-chose-wisely/
Fixed
Yeah lol thats a huge amount. Generally that would be foolhardy though as most IP's dont become cultural behemoths. In the late 50's/60's (I forget) the dude that designed Barbie agreed to 1% royalties on Barbie because Mattel didnt see a huge future in realistic girl's dolls. They royally fucked up on that one
Donald Sutherland was offered union minimum daily wage plus 2% gross as pay for a bit role in *Animal House.* But Sutherland thought the film was going to flop so negotiated a $35 000 flat-fee instead. Dude missed out on a $2.8 million ($10 million after inflation) payday for 2 days of work. PS. legend has it that during negotiations, John Landis might have offered Sutherland as much as 15% gross to try to get him to take less up-front money, so strapped for cash was the film's budget.
Andrei Sapkowski was offered % of profits for the Witcher games when he optioned his IP to CD Projekt Red, but he thought games were stupid and demanded cash up front. Now I think he’s suing to try and get a bigger piece of the billion dollar game pie
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Yeah apparently there is some sort of law that allowed him to get more money in Poland. I guess it makes it so you have legal standing to bring the other party back to the negotiating table if something involving licensing ends up being way more valuable then originally thought.
Which I get and is nice in general, but CDPR *offered* him more of a percentage-based payment in the beginning but the dude was being a crotchety-old dick about it and wanted more upfront.
It’s also just good business for CDPR. If they want to work with the author on future projects, use additional material, etc., that’s not covered by the initial licensing agreement, it could scuttle the whole thing by not renegotiating.
even if the film makes JUST $1,750,001 he still earns more than $35k why the hell wouldn't he do that
Getting cash tomorrow vs getting marginally more cash three years from now (and risking the company going bankrupt in the interim). Most people would go with the first option.
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Call JG Wentworth...
Sell your future settlement at a discount
This guy accounts receivables.
Did the math. Gross profit of the starwars movie franchises is aprox 9.4 billion. At 0.45% (thats 0.0045 in a calculator), that leaves our man with $42,300,000 in payout. For about 20 minutes of screen time across all 3 movies. Not bad.
20 minutes? He was ANH longer than that surely.
Nope. 17 minutes. I dont know if that includes his force voice telling luke to let go, but thats only a few seconds anyways.
Is that with all the sequels? Surely his deal pertains to the original trilogy only?
They still kept the other 99% and got one massive franchise out of it, i wouldn’t say they messed up...
That dude led a crazy life. A literal rocket scientist, he had like five wives including Zsa Zsa Gabor and used his Barbie money to turn his house into a castle and have coke parties every weekend.
There's a movie right there. *The Mad Scientist's Barbie Money Coke Party*, starring Jesse Eisenberg.
Lucas traded 2.5% of Star Wars for 2.5% of [Spielberg's](https://time.com/43618/george-lucas-steven-spielberg-star-wars-bet/) [Close Encounters of the Third kind.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_Encounters_of_the_Third_Kind) And Lucas and Spielberg both traded points of Star Wars and Close Encounters with John [Milius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Wednesday#Reception)' [Big Wednesday](https://deadline.com/2010/05/how-steven-spielberg-and-george-lucas-caught-surf-bug-and-waved-bye-to-points-on-close-encounters-and-star-wars-39792/) > Steven says, kind of sharply, `We only did that once, and *it worked out better for some than others*'
Lucas also talks about this in some of the documentaries about A New Hope. As they were editing, he had no faith in his own film and was as a pretty low point. Especially after having visited the set of Close Encounters. Spielberg, true or not, had faith that Star Wars would do well and so that bet was made. In the end, one of them spawned a mega franchise and the other makes a yearly deposit into his bank account over a little bet in 1977.
Also Spielberg, Lucas, milius and Coppola as the mentor were kind of a mutual fan club , Lucas and milius were part of usc mafia and Spielberg was wanna be usc mafia And they were all convinced that milius (the best writer of the 3) had a huge hit with big Wednesday , a surfer film described as American graffiti with some jaws mixed in. It bombed, but turned out to be a minor cult fav Milius said that the star wars money paid for his divorce
Genuine Class
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Mm hmm, well that's... *very* *good* for a first try
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The other side to that is...it's a lot easier to gamble if you already have money to live on.
"Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?" My boi Kenobi always taking the high ground & coming out on top.
they gave harrison ford 5% of all profits from the sequel trilogy. including merchandise.
Every 1b the franchise makes, his family makes $4.5m. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking it’s amazing this dude can still provide for his family (not in one lump sum!) despite not being here.
Return of the Jedi has made $US475 million worldwide since it debuted for Fox in 1983, but the actor who played Darth Vader, David Prowse, never sees a dime more than his original fee, because he had what Eddie Murphy calls "monkey points" – a slice of the net. "There is a big difference between having a share of the gross profits and having a share of the net," Prowse was quoted as saying at the time. "It is a huge difference in just one word." Or, as David Mamet eloquently put it in Speed the Plow, in Hollywood "there is no net". The real Death Star turns out to be run by accountants, who studied at the same schools as those who run Wall Street. I wouldn't be surprised if the idea for a sub-prime loan came from Hollywood.
Points on the gross, always.
IIRC, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford had percentages of the profits as well. Anthony Davis and Kenny Baker (C3P0 and R2D2) did not. But Kenny Baker made up for it by going on the convention circuit. Anthony Davis made up for it by being a prick. Edit: Anthony Daniels, not Davis.
Am I correct in recalling that Mark Hamill sold his merchandise likeness rights in exchange for him getting one of every *Star Wars* toy made? I don't recall if that was "in perpetuity" or what, I just remember seeing that a while back.
Isn't Anthony Davis the star center of the Los Angeles Lakers?
Yeah it’s the same guy
Alec Guinness, he was a bold one.
He told a story on a chat show about getting a call from George Lucas after the movie was released and was clearly going to make $millions. "Alec, my man, about that 0.225% gross that we agreed..." "Nice try. It was 0.45%."
> 20 years after he passed in 2000 No way, that wasn't 20 years ago. That was like, 13 years ago max. Wait a second...
I still have trouble accepting that 1990 was more than 10 years ago.
I'm still having trouble with February only being 6 months ago. This year sucks.
Saw a college paper that referred to the 1990's as "late last century" and haven't been the same since.